Table of Contents

Biographical and Historical Note

H. Rubinfine & Son was a family-owned and -operated poultry business in Atlantic
County, New Jersey, that flourished between 1940 and the mid-1960s. In the 1920s,
David Rubinfine, who was a painter and paperhanger, began a sideline business
to sell eggs and poultry. By 1934 he leased property in McKee City,
New Jersey, and in 1938 began the family poultry business. The Rubinfines moved the operation
several times to increase capacity because the demand for their product was
growing. By the 1950s their poultry business was one of the largest in New Jersey. At
that time they had met one of their goals: to grow 60,000 broilers. Unfortunately,
the poultry business began to decline in New Jersey around the beginning of
1960, and by the middle of that decade the Rubinfines were no longer poultry
farmers.

David Rubinfine’s brother Louis (1919-1981), son Hyman (“Harry,” 1901-1972), and daughter-in-law Mary (Mamie)
Sutler (1904-1987) were involved in the family business. In 1940 Harry and Mamie Rubinfine began
a lifelong dedication to poultry farming that included all aspects of the business,
from egg production to the dressed bird. Their son
Joseph R. was involved from an early age in the
family enterprise.

In the late 1940s Harry Rubinfine shifted the operation from retail to wholesale.
Rubinfine, who had developed a strong relationship with the Ralston Purina Company,
focused his operation on the growing of broilers. At the same time they expanded
the physical operations to accommodate this change. The Rubinfines purchased
additional properties including the McKee Estate, which they acquired from the
Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia. By the mid-1960s poultry farming was no
longer a viable enterprise in New Jersey. Rubinfine became a Purina feed dealer,
and the poultry farm was no longer in operation.

Sources:

Historical and biographical information obtained from this collection.

Scope and Content Note

The H. Rubinfine & Son Archive, spanning 1926-1972, documents a family-owned
poultry business in Southern New Jersey. It consists of one linear foot of photographs,
cancelled checks, bank statements, check stubs, ledgers, letters, memorandum,
letterhead, deeds, newspaper clippings, financial papers, and an order book-business,
financial, and visual materials that provide a quick history of the company.
The archive is small, but a valuable source of information about an important
regional industry that thrived from the 1930s through the 1950s in New Jersey.

The collection is arranged in the following way: a collection note, photographs,
newspaper clippings, papers related to the Ralston Purina Company, deeds, financial
documents, and the specifications for a commercial motor scale. The printed
materials and the images give insight into the development of a family-owned
poultry farm from its inception in the 1930s to its demise in the 1960s.

Joseph Rubinfine wrote in his description of the family business, “At the
peak of his activity, my father, Harry Rubinfine (1901-1972), owned the largest
poultry raising operation in New Jersey, with capacity for 100,000 meat chickens”
(F1). Rubinfine said that his father “gravitated to Delaware, admired the Delmarva
farmers, and received a great deal of help from the poultry pathology laboratory
at the University of Delaware in fighting the virulent diseases that meant calamity
and possible ruin for all poultry farmers.”

Four files contain photographs that provide a brief visual history of the
Rubinfines’ life, which was dedicated to their business (F2-F5). Photographs
include portraits of Harry; pictures of Joseph by himself and with his father;
images of the Rubinfines’ home, the coops, related pictures of their poultry
farm, and photographs of Harry attending Ralston Purina business events.

There are three newspaper clippings from New Jersey papers showing Harry and
Joseph Rubinfine. The pictures highlight Harry and Joseph as a father-son team
celebrating Father’s Day, Harry shown with two 4-H club members, and a county
agricultural agent pictured with “poultry expert” Harry (F6). Nine items from
the Ralston Purina Company with the famous checkerboard logo are included in
this collection. The documents include correspondence, company bulletin, and
an advertisement (F7).

The bulk of this small collection is financial documents about the company,
which includes two deeds, an order book, tax returns, three ledger books, three
groups of loose ledger papers, a balance sheet, check stubs, and cancelled checks
(F8-F20). Some of the checks have a chicken logo printed on them. The final
document is a specification for a 20-ton commercial motor scale (F21